(S 1)
All in her mated with that mighty hour,
85 As if the last remnant had been slain by Death
Of the humanity that once was hers.
(S 2)
Assuming a spiritual wide control,
Making life’s sea a mirror of heaven’s sky,
The young divinity in her earthly limbs
90 Filled with celestial strength her mortal part.
(S 3)
Over was the haunted pain, the rending fear:
Her grief had passed away, her mind was still,
Her heart beat quietly with a sovereign force.
(S 4)
There came a freedom from the heart-strings’ clutch,
95 Now all her acts sprang from a godhead’s calm.
(S 5)
Calmly she laid upon the forest soil
The dead who still reposed upon her breast
And bore to turn away from the dead form:
Sole now she rose to meet the dreadful god.
(S 6)
100 That mightier spirit turned its mastering gaze
On life and things, inheritor of a work
Left to it unfinished from her halting past,
When yet the mind, a passionate learner, toiled
And ill-shaped instruments were crudely moved.
(S 7)
105 Transcended now was the poor human rule;
A sovereign power was there, a godlike will.
(S 8)
A moment yet she lingered motionless
And looked down on the dead man at her feet;
Then like a tree recovering from a wind
110 She raised her noble head; fronting her gaze
Something stood there, unearthly, sombre, grand,
A limitless denial of all being
That wore the terror and wonder of a shape.
(S 9)
In its appalling eyes the tenebrous Form
115 Bore the deep pity of destroying gods;
A sorrowful irony curved the dreadful lips
That speak the word of doom. Eternal Night
In the dire beauty of an immortal face
Pitying arose, receiving all that lives
120 For ever into its fathomless heart, refuge
Of creatures from their anguish and world-pain.
(S 10)
His shape was nothingness made real, his limbs
Were monuments of transience and beneath
Brows of unwearying calm large godlike lids
125 Silent beheld the writhing serpent, life.
(S 11)
Unmoved their timeless wide unchanging gaze
Had seen the unprofitable cycles pass,
Survived the passing of unnumbered stars
And sheltered still the same immutable orbs.
(S 12)
130 The two opposed each other with their eyes,
Woman and universal god: around her,
Piling their void unbearable loneliness
Upon her mighty uncompanioned soul,
Many inhuman solitudes came close.
(S 13)
135 Vacant eternities forbidding hope
Laid upon her their huge and lifeless look,
And to her ears, silencing earthly sounds,
A sad and formidable voice arose
Which seemed the whole adverse world’s. “Unclasp”, it cried,
140 “Thy passionate influence and relax, O slave
Of Nature, changing tool of changeless Law,
Who vainly writh’st rebellion to my yoke,
Thy elemental grasp; weep and forget.
(S 14)
Entomb thy passion in its living grave.
(S 15)
145 Leave now the once-loved spirit’s abandoned robe:
Pass lonely back to thy vain life on earth.”
(S 16)
It ceased, she moved not, and it spoke again,
Lowering its mighty key to human chords, —
Yet a dread cry behind the uttered sounds,
150 Echoing all sadness and immortal scorn,
Moaned like a hunger of far wandering waves.
(S 17)
“Wilt thou for ever keep thy passionate hold,
Thyself a creature doomed like him to pass,
Denying his soul death’s calm and silent rest?
(S 18)
155 Relax thy grasp; this body is earth’s and thine,
His spirit now belongs to a greater power.
(S 19)
Woman, thy husband suffers.” Savitri
Drew back her heart’s force that clasped his body still
Where from her lap renounced on the smooth grass
160 Softly it lay, as often before in sleep
When from their couch she rose in the white dawn
Called by her daily tasks: now too, as if called,
She rose and stood gathered in lonely strength,
Like one who drops his mantle for a race
165 And waits the signal, motionlessly swift.
(S 20)
She knew not to what course: her spirit above
On the crypt-summit of her secret form
Like one left sentinel on a mountain crest,
A fiery-footed splendour puissant-winged,
170 Watched flaming-silent, with her voiceless soul
Like a still sail upon a windless sea.
(S 21)
White passionless it rode, an anchored might,
Waiting what far-ridged impulse should arise
Out of the eternal depths and cast its surge.
(S 22)
175 Then Death the king leaned boundless down, as leans
Night over tired lands, when evening pales
And fading gleams break down the horizon’s walls,
Nor yet the dusk grows mystic with the moon.
(S 23)
The dim and awful godhead rose erect
180 From his brief stooping to his touch on earth,
And, like a dream that wakes out of a dream,
Forsaking the poor mould of that dead clay,
Another luminous Satyavan arose,
Starting upright from the recumbent earth
185 As if someone over viewless borders stepped
Emerging on the edge of unseen worlds.
(S 24)
In the earth’s day the silent marvel stood
Between the mortal woman and the god.
(S 25)
Such seemed he as if one departed came
190 Wearing the light of a celestial shape
Splendidly alien to the mortal air.
(S 26)
The mind sought things long loved and fell back foiled
From unfamiliar hues, beheld yet longed,
By the sweet radiant form unsatisfied,
195 Incredulous of its too bright hints of heaven;
Too strange the brilliant phantasm to life’s clasp
Desiring the warm creations of the earth
Reared in the ardour of material suns,
The senses seized in vain a glorious shade:
200 Only the spirit knew the spirit still,
And the heart divined the old loved heart, though changed.
(S 27)
Between two realms he stood, not wavering,
But fixed in quiet strong expectancy,
Like one who, sightless, listens for a command.
(S 28)
205 So were they immobile on that earthly field,
Powers not of earth, though one in human clay.
(S 29)
On either side of one two spirits strove;
Silence battled with silence, vast with vast.
(S 30)
But now the impulse of the Path was felt
210 Moving from the Silence that supports the stars
To touch the confines of the visible world.
(S 31)
Luminous he moved away; behind him Death
Went slowly with his noiseless tread, as seen
In dream-built fields a shadowy herdsman glides
215 Behind some wanderer from his voiceless herds,
And Savitri moved behind eternal Death,
Her mortal pace was equalled with the god’s.
(S 32)
Wordless she travelled in her lover’s steps,
Planting her human feet where his had trod,
220 Into the perilous silences beyond.